Interval training turbo-charges your workouts

Interval training turbocharges your workouts so that you get three times the benefit in less than half the time.

 

Research has found that men who sprinted for a minute or two, a couple of times during a workout, exercised only 30 minutes but got the same cardiovascular benefits as a group of men working out at the same steady pace for an hour and a half!

 

How can you do this?

 When you go on your daily walk or run, just vary the pace for at least a minute. Sprint for a minute or two, or five, change the pace of the sprint, then slow jog for a while. Do it again once or twice.

 

Kids are natural exercise experts

Have you ever seen a kid slogging away for an hour at the same pace? Not unless they’re on a track team. Only adults do this—maybe because we think fitness has to be dull and grueling, or must be part of a predetermined, rigid program in order to work.

 

Why haven’t we known about this for years? We could have learned how to keep fit by watching children play. They do this naturally.

 

Kids exercise naturally at many different paces. They sprint, they stop. They run, jog to get to a baseball field, walk, climb a tree or monkey bars. Then they sit quietly, and after a few minutes burst up and out to another exciting activity.

Kids do interval training naturally. They’re spontaneous.

 

Exercise and health are built in

We’re all built to do it. So when you exercise, if you get the urge to sprint, do handsprings, walk, run sideways, stop and stretch—just do it! Then follow the next idea that springs into your mind.

 

You’ll gain the most benefit out of your exercise session just doing what you want, and it will be much more fun and rewarding physiologically.

 

You can still do it as part of a program, a plan to consistently work out to maintain your health.  Just build in a little spontaneity.

What is creativity, and how can you tap into it?

 A hip pocket definition: creativity is putting two things together that you haven’t put together before.

 

 How about garlic mustard ice cream? Not the tastiest snack in the world—at least, to Americans—but the idea might make a kid laugh! That’s an example of creativity. In the world of snacks, this idea may be useless or counterproductive.

But in the world of children’s entertainment, putting two polar opposite foods together is fun and may turn out to be profitable for someone, someday.  Try lemon ice silicone spray. Or pillbugs soaked in perfume, rinsed in a rusty bucket and coated with chicken soup glaze. Eeewwww….but that’s the point.

 

This is one of the best explanations of creative thinking I’ve ever read:

Introduction to Creative Thinking by Robert Harris. Read it to find out how creativity = an ability + an attitude + a process.

 

One of the most vital needs in business, in nonprofits, and in education is creativity. Reports in the New York Times, business publications and books all speak about the need to help everyone learn to tap their creative potential.

 

 

Resources on the need for creativity

 Click for 21^st century creativity and innovation skills resources.

 Click for 21st century communication and collaboration resources.

 Click for critical thinking and creativity resources, on Bloom’s taxonomy:

 Benjamin Bloom (1956) developed a classification of levels of intellectual behavior in learning. This taxonomy contained three overlapping domains: the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. Within the cognitive domain, he identified six levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. These domains and levels are still useful today as you develop the critical thinking skills of your students.

 

Worth a visit: Sir Ken Robinson’s beautiful, creative website on creativity and innovation.

 

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Coming soon…

Why do schools need to focus more on relationships, creativity and critical thinking skills?

From Teaching Thinking Skills, by Kathleen Cotton:

Perhaps most importantly in today’s information age, thinking skills are viewed as crucial for educated persons to cope with a rapidly changing world. Many educators believe that specific knowledge will not be as important to tomorrow’s workers and citizens as the ability to learn and make sense of new information.
—Deborah Gough, 1991

 

 Deborah Gough’s words…typify the current viewpoint in education about the importance of teaching today’s students to think critically and creatively. Virtually all writers on this subject discuss thinking skills in connection with the two related phenomena of modern technology and fast-paced change…

 

 

 

Upcoming post: The mindlike qualities of the Internet

 

 More topics coming soon…

 

• Most innovations needed now are social

 

• Is creativity the most vital resource in business today?

 

• 21st century schools must focus on relationships - the first of four R’s

 

• Star Trek: Boldly Splitting Infinitives and Stereotypes from Here to the Future

How the innovative science fiction series made network TV history, by posting minorities in positions of authority nearly equal to the white, male captain in a future version of the United States–the United Federation of Planets

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Da Vinci Code: heresy or innovation?

 “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”

–from Nietzsche’s Human, all too Human, s.483, R.J. Hollingdale transl. 

One man’s heresy is another man’s innovation.  And today’s innovation is tomorrow’s article of faith.

Case in point: Martin Luther’s actions leading to the Protestant Reformation in the 16^th century. Without his actions against the Catholic Church, there would be no Protestant Reformation.  Considered a heretic at the time, Luther’s contribution to the doctrine of religious freedom and individual liberties is immense.

The doctrine of religious freedom is a core foundation on which the US Constitution stands. It is now an article of faith in our democracy, but is based on an innovation then considered heresy.

Many consider the The Da Vinci Code a heretical book and movie. Others find it entertaining fiction, and still others take it as literal or figurative truth–or possibly containing the kernel of hidden or suppressed truths.

The concept that the bloodline of Jesus lives through Mary Magdalene, his “companion” (meaning wife in ancient language) offends many.  But it offers a window into a view that was considered part of Jesus legacy until the “Council of Mycea,” in a meeting in centuries past to determine which gospels to include and exlude from the official version of the Holy Bible. 

 

One can imagine this meeting as being similar to a corporate board meeting, with various persons of varying authority and ability to present, persuade and convince–all vying, with varying degrees of success, to be heard and accepted.

 

Anyone who has attended a group meeting of any kind knows that the best or most useful ideas or proposals are not always accepted and acted upon. Also individual experience and beliefs as well as ethnic, racial, gender and other biases can and often does impede reason and rational analysis. (How reasonable, for example, could any meeting presided by the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, Putin or Saddam Hussein be?)

I believe it’s entirely possible that such a council of learned (and not so learned), yet biased men (mostly men, one must assume) could have easily had profoundly selfish reasons to exclude gospels by Mary Magdalene and others–just as the Catholic hierarchy has selfish reasons to exclude women from the clergy.

The Bible, like any other book, is only as good as its input. “Garbage in, garbage out,” is true for all works of man and woman.

According to the movie, Mary Magdalene authored a gospel, one that obviously was excluded from what we now know as The Holy Bible. This current, highly edited version of Bible is but one of many versions of what could have been included many gospels.

Church and religious leaders argued for days or weeks in various official meetings, such as the Council of Rome in 382 AD, over what they determined to be official history of Jesus, and what would be excluded from the Bible. Doubtless politics and the persuasive power of individuals, along with their positions of authority, determined who won his point. 

The popularity of The Da Vinci Code has spurred a heated, sometimes furious, debate. One website I found offers, like those who decided which gospels were true and which were false, its own version of “the truth” behind the Da Vinci Code. 

We may never know the full truth behind many of the legends, statements, assumptions and research in the book and film. It is a fascinating romp through the legend of the Holy Grail, and is based on a mix of historical fact, legend and imagination. But we do know, from historical research, that certain portions of Christian history were left out of the Holy Bible. 

Like other explorations into the Christ legend, notably Monty Python’s hilarious skit on Michelangelo and the Last Supper, the Da Vinci Code sounds heretical. In the Python sketch, Michelangelo explains the three Christs to a skeptical pope with “What’s wrong with a bit of artistic license? The fat one balances out the two skinny ones!” 

But such heresy is often the fodder, or contains the seeds of, innovation. How so?  

 

 

The Christian religion sees God as one being, an all-mighty and mostly male figure.Many ancient religions, by contrast, revere femininity and associate women with the God Principle.

This is something Christianity considers heresy, unless you count the reverence for Mary, mother of Jesus—mostly within the Catholic Church. 

But—and here’s the heresy and the innovation—why should anyone consider God to be male or female? Isn’t that a false duality? What are the reasons for such thinking and beliefs?  

In Western civilization the dominance of the male is the likely culprit. Only recently, with the rise of “womens’ liberation” and feminism, has the female viewpoint been accepted. This view may be reflected in the modern preponderance of “wife jokes,” in which the male is seen as an underling, especially in a marriage. This kind of humor could be a backlash against the rise of female domination, especially in the home, which is usually seen as the woman’s domain in a marriage.  

Why should the God Principle be either male or female?

Is it impossible to consider a duality within a singularity?

How about a God that transcends gender, neither male or female? Or contains both, like a hermaphrodite?

In my own view, God is an impersonal (yet also personal) Force with infinite power and breadth, while still embodied and reflected in “motes” like human beings, animals, plants, planets and suns and dirt and feces—literally All That Is. How could such a God be considered male or female?

It’s worth noting that Jesus embodied many characteristics considered “female” in our male-dominated culture:

·        Long hair

·        Nurturing

·        Compassionate

·        Communicative 

By contrast, most conservative Christian ministers and priests have short hair, and lead their churches with typical male traits of control and dominance as do many govenmental and corporate leaders. Priests of course must be male—a situation many Catholics are beginning to challenge and question, but with no resolution in sight for the near term.   

What are your ideas and opinions?  

Is the notion of Jesus or God as a man or male offensive or comfortable to you? Why?  

What do you think of the recent foray by Episcopal bishops to allow gay men into their ranks?

Is this heresy? or innovation in religious acceptance of a normal, albeit unpopular, not common and even vilified, human trait—desire for the same sex?

Does the Da Vinci Code represent heresy or innovation–or something else–to you?

Does life stay the same, or constantly evolve?

 ”The more things change, the more they remain the same.” People who say this do so in reference to repeating patterns they notice, usually out of irritation. It’s a tidy aphorism, but it is absolutely untrue.

While many things may appear to remain the same–death and taxes foremost among them–all of life in fact keeps evolving. Perhaps Nature retreads its tires or follows a well-beaten path at times–after all, it is efficient–but it always does so in new ways and in new forms, because it depends on evolution.

Nature is endlessly creative, and the interaction between the myriad elements of Nature is itself a form of communication. Actions send a message–in fact, actions are a form of communication. Reactions send back the message. The message spells change, no matter its form.

And change encompasses creation and destruction, which are merely two sides of the same coin: continual transformation, of which evolution is a part.

As I wrote in another post, innovation is the leapfrogging of progress that relies on the two processes of communication and creativity (which includes destruction). It’s an everchanging combination of forces that swirl in a maelstrom of natural patterns, governed by nature’s laws. The combination of repeated patterns and unique inputs to those patterns create–and in fact, guarantee–the unique quality of every moment.

If it the opposite seems true, the problem lies in our perspective.

So no, life never stays the same. Consider that fact when you are bored with your life.

Consider that one moment you may breathe the same molecules once breathed by Jesus, the next you inhale the same air breathed by Charles Manson–perhaps that which he huffed in and out while smoking a cigarette and planning the death of Sharon Tate.

And your final breath may be of the same air you breathed at the moment of your birth–or of molecules formed at the birth of a star a million galaxies away from you.

If you think we’re not all connected at some fundamental level to the entire universe, think again.

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What are your thoughts on this?

Why does Nature rely on evolution, communication, innovation or creativity?

Or is something else entirely going on?

Your present and your future are innovation, communication and creativity.

Have you ever wondered what kind of world we would live in without innovation, communication or creativity?

There could be no such world. Nature itself relies on all three. They are integral to its being, and form the basis of evolution.

And they are integral to human society.

As Neitzche says, “Kindness is the golden chain that binds society.” Indeed, without pervasive cooperation and respect, we would not have evolved communities.  Interdependence is a defining characteristic of any community. So communication and innovation rely on kindness to glue society together.

Communication is the oil that lubricates societal movement, growth, destruction and change. Creativity is the fuel.

 And innovation is the leapfrogging of progress that relies on the two former processes, an everchanging combination of forces that swirl in a maelstrom of natural patterns, governed by nature’s laws. The combination of repeated patterns and unique inputs to those patterns create and guarantee the unique quality of every moment.